Ebb and Flow
by shipoforigins
Summary: Eleven months and a brain tumor. A few fancy words. Both of them are dying and both their worlds are crumbling. Warning: death fic and implied originshipping.


**Ebb and Flow**

They lost him in September when the leaves were just beginning to change color. Steven never made it out to the ceremony and everyone attributed it to his perceived arrogance. The only one who saw him that day was Winona, and even then it was only his pale hand sliding through the crack in the front door. The nigh before he said he had the flu.

He was lying.

– – –

Wallace noticed the signs back in October the year before. Frequent headaches, loss of memory. He thought it was only stress, nothing to worry about. And so he hid behind a smile as the throbbing in his frontal cortex grew and hammered and pounded away against his skull, eating its way slowly through his head. He could live with the pain, so long as nobody knew about it.

He visited Juan and Steven to take his mind off the League for a few days and to get some air. He forced the pain behind his laughing and jokes. Wallace thought he could fool them by believing there was no problem, and for a time they ignored it too. It felt good. The freedom of speech, letting his tongue flick and lips bend to create words that flowed out of his mouth gently like a stream. It was so simple, pleasurable. It was easy to dazzle and fool people with speech, so long as he chose the right words. He had a gift for it. His eloquence and grace.

Juan and Steven, however, were two who couldn't be moved by it.

When Wallace began to trip over his words, they began to worry. The headaches grew into migraines and Wallace spoke less frequently. They ate away at his vocabulary. Elaborate. Lithe. Pantomime. Imbroglio. Malleable. He lost them all.

– – –

In November when the air began to cool, Juan left for the Sootopolis Gym with the weight of worry in his gut. He told Steven to keep an eye out. Steven's lips were pressed together.

– – –

It became a serious in December. Nobody saw Wallace the days leading up to holiday and so Steven went to check on him.

He found Wallace bowing his head over the toilet.

They spent Christmas locked in the bathroom.

– – –

He was diagnosed on New Year's. Glioblastoma multiforme. Steven stopped coming over, and so Winona started. Wallace said nothing as Steven left. The words crumbled at his lips and Steven shut the door before he could make a sound.

She was a much better nurse. The doctors told him to stay in bed (and so did Winona), but Wallace always fought to leave and escape to the ocean where he would take swims with Milotic.

He hardly spoke now because the sound of his own voice vibrating in his body made his headaches almost unbearable, which in turn made his stomach into a whirlpool. It was risky for him to go out in the water, but he trusted Milotic to protect him. Everyday it harder for him to hold his breath, and the ever-changing directions of the currents made him queasy, but Wallace persisted for a couple weeks until Milotic had to dive several fathoms for him in the middle of the night.

Winona became a permanent accessory in Wallace's house.

"I can't believe you did that," she told him while he leaned over the toilet. "Stupid."

"Yes. You can." He spoke to the porcelain. Wallace heard the shaking in Winona's voice.

– – –

By February Wallace was confined to his bed. He had started to lose control of his muscles, and if he tried to walk he would collapse after a few steps. He refused crutches or any other form besides the walls and stumbled through the house for a couple days before his left leg completely gave out. It twitched desperately and he soon lost command over it. Some days later he lost feeling in his foot.

Wallace finally became frightened. He stopped hiding behind his smiles.

– – –

While Wallace was sleeping, Winona was able to leave the house.

One night she went over to Mossdeep to talk to Steven. It wasn't her place to interfere with him and his issues, but this was different. Winona knew Steven wouldn't do anything without a proper nudge, and in this case he needed much more than that.

"I'm not enough, you know." She said. Winona wasn't one to scold people in such delicate situations, but he felt like she was.

"It's not my job." Steven felt like a child.

"Friendship isn't a _job_."

– – –

Spring came slowly and the air became cool and clean again. Steven stayed in his caves.

– – –

Wallace kept a dictionary by his bed. Oblivion. Pellucid. He looked up words, trying to regain his vocabulary in tiny handfuls. Prosody. Kaleidoscope. Perpetuity. His tongue refused to perform with the same finesse and his lips trembled with hesitation as he tried to find the words, to find their structure on his mouth. But the left side of his jaw went slack and he gave up.

Throughout April Winona watched as Wallace read through the dictionary. Velleity. Cessation. A couple weeks into the month and Winona noticed that Wallace went back to the same couple pages every few days. She started to cry. Wallace didn't understand.

Memoir. Oasis. Sempiternal.

– – –

The summer came and so did the heat. Temperatures rose. Wallace didn't. He slept more and more often and had bouts of somnolence, through which Winona now stayed. Ever since Wallace experienced his first seizure Winona was too afraid to leave him.

It had happened in late May, just as it was starting to get hot. Winona was in the kitchen heating water when she heard a thud from Wallace's room. He was on the floor by the bed, his duvet tangled in his legs and falling from the mattress. His eyes were wide open but the rest of his face was slack, saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth, as the left side of his body shuddered and jerked. Wallace had lost all control of his left arm and leg after that.

Winona lost all control of her tear ducts.

She spent a night at Steven's while Wallace was transferred to the hospital in June. She didn't say anything to him until the next morning when her eyes were bright red and black underneath.

"Go." The floodgates cracked.

Steven looked away. He never liked it when people cried.

– – –

The caves stayed cool during the heat of July. Steven stayed there for hours each day. He didn't want to sweat in the sun. He didn't want to see other people. All he wanted was to be alone there.

_Friendship is not a job_.

No, he thought. But it shouldn't be torture either.

– – –

Wallace deteriorated quickly through August. He couldn't read anymore because it made him dizzy. He left his Pokemon at home. The sight of them made him cry and consequently hyperventilate. He slept for up to eighteen or twenty hours a day, and when he was awake he stared off into space, quietly listening to the radio in his room. He was fed nutrients through a tube. Winona visited him everyday to keep him company. She tried her best to make jokes, but she wasn't very good at it. Every now and then Wallace would half smile (his left side was paralyzed). He appreciated her attempts.

– – –

One night Winona slept over in the hospital. In the pastel light of the morning she awoke to muttering from Wallace's bed.

A name, a plea.

Winona placed her head back onto the damp hospital pillow.

– – –

"You have to go." Winona followed Steven into the cave. It was late August and the leaves were turning red.

Steven turned to the wall of the cave.

"There's not much time left,"

"I know." His body was shaking in the darkness. He hoped Winona couldn't see. He had hardened himself for so many years. How could a few words possibly break through the iron ore encasing his heart? "I know."

– – –

On the last day of August, Steven stayed in bed all day.

On the first day of September, Steven punched a hole through his wall.

On the second day of September, Steven went to the hospital.

– – –

Wallace was entering sleep when Steven stepped into the room. Wallace's face and hair has lost the bright luster they once possessed, and his entire body had a grayish tint from lack of sunlight. There were dark patches of skin under his eyes. His frame was considerably smaller, as his muscle wasted away from lack of use and his body resorted to cannibalism, sapping energy from the tiny bits of fat still on his body. The skin on his left arm was nearly white, transparent, thin, like the film inside an egg shell. As soon as he saw him, Steven broke.

His legs gave out. Gasping and choking, he staggered weakly over to Wallace's bedside. Shakily grabbing his friend's hand, Steven tried to speak, but all that came from his mouth was a distressed cry that was between a squeak and a moan.

It was so quick. Eleven months. And he wasn't there. He was wrapped in his own dark cave, alone. Stone cold. There was a reason for that idiom.

Steven pressed his forehead against Wallace's. He cried.

"I'm sorry."

– – –

The process of erosion is a slow one, but it is no doubt powerful. Cliffs and shores can be greatly reduced by meters at a time, as waves lick and bite solid layers of land. Rocks are smoothed into tiny grains of shining sand, shells polished by salt. Continents can shift and change as the oceans become deeper, more powerful, mining the Earth. And sometimes, as the land crumbles away, the water will reveal the finest treasures hidden within the ground.

– – –

On the third day of September, Steven was alone.

– – –

On the day of the funeral, Winona stood among a crowd of people. She left before the ceremony was done.

"Steven's not here? What's wrong with him?"

"He's probably upset that he had to sacrifice the Champion title. How arrogant."

"Of course he's not here. They used to be friends, right? But once he lost his title he probably got a ll bitter."

"How awful."

She had heard quite enough.

She knocked on Steven's door five times before he opened it. The crack was about two centimeters.

"Take this." Winona lifted something from her bag and held it up to the crack.

A thin pale hand crept through the door. His fingers wrapped around soft white fabric. Winona heard his breath hitch from behind the door as she released the item, which disappeared through the doorway.

"Thank you." Steven croaked quietly. He closed the door.

– – –

Steven held the fabric closely to his face, inhaling.

"Nenuphar. Petrichor. Aquamarine." Wallace whispered tenderly in his ear.

"Paralian. Cerulean."

"Incandescent."

"Crepuscular." He began to cry.

"Eternal." Wallace cooed softly.

"Ephemeral." Steven gasped.

"Celestial" Wallace's voice faded.

"Ebb."

"Flow."


End file.
